XXXVI. File Alteration Monitor Functions

Introduction

FAM monitors files and directories, notifying interested applications of changes. More information about FAM is available at http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam/.

A PHP script may specify a list of files for FAM to monitor using the functions provided by this extension.

The FAM process is started when the first connection from any application to it is opened. It exits after all connections to it have been closed.

Note: This extension has been moved to the PECL repository and is no longer bundled with PHP as of PHP 5.1.0.

Note: This extension is not available on Windows platforms.

Requirements

This extension uses the functions of the FAM library, developed by SGI. Therefore you have to download and install the FAM library.

Installation

To use PHP's FAM support you must compile PHP --with-fam[=DIR] where DIR is the location of the directory containing the lib and include directories.

Runtime Configuration

This extension has no configuration directives defined in php.ini.

Resource Types

There are two resource types used in the FAM module. The first one is the connection to the FAM service returned by fam_open(), the second a monitoring resource returned by the fam_monitor_XXX functions.

Predefined Constants

The constants below are defined by this extension, and will only be available when the extension has either been compiled into PHP or dynamically loaded at runtime.

Table 1. FAM event constants

Constant	Description
`FAMChanged` (integer)	Some value which can be obtained with fstat(1) changed for a file or directory.
`FAMDeleted` (integer)	A file or directory was deleted or renamed.
`FAMStartExecuting` (integer)	An executable file started executing.
`FAMStopExecuting` (integer)	An executable file that was running finished.
`FAMCreated` (integer)	A file was created in a directory.
`FAMMoved` (integer)	This event never occurs.
`FAMAcknowledge` (integer)	An event in response to fam_cancel_monitor().
`FAMExists` (integer)	An event upon request to monitor a file or directory. When a directory is monitored, an event for that directory and every file contained in that directory is issued.
`FAMEndExist` (integer)	Event after the last FAMEExists event.

Table of Contents
fam_cancel_monitor -- Terminate monitoring
fam_close -- Close FAM connection
fam_monitor_collection -- Monitor a collection of files in a directory for changes
fam_monitor_directory -- Monitor a directory for changes
fam_monitor_file -- Monitor a regular file for changes
fam_next_event -- Get next pending FAM event
fam_open -- Open connection to FAM daemon
fam_pending -- Check for pending FAM events
fam_resume_monitor -- Resume suspended monitoring
fam_suspend_monitor -- Temporarily suspend monitoring